I'm Not That Man Anymore
by poma14
Summary: Bates heads to London and finally has it out with Vera. All the dirty laundry comes out. Set during 2X06.


**A/N: **So here goes nothing. . .This is my first ever Fanfic! I'll be honest, I haven't written much since the days when I toyed with being a journalism major way back when, and never fiction! Needless to say, I welcome and encourage your reviews.

Of course, Downton Abbey and its characters are owned by Julian Fellowes and ITV.

**Spoilers:** Story deals with the trip Bates is going to take to London in Series 2, episode 6 and how he gets that nasty wound on his head! I always imagined my first fanfic would be some fluffy Anna/Bates piece. But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to actually provide Vera with a backstory-it's been sorely missing so far this season. Maybe Chapter 2, might be fluffy.

**I'm Not That Man Anymore**

The London air was a straight jacket; muggy, oppressive, no way to escape it. The early afternoon showers were all but a brief respite from the unbearable August heat. But now over, the heat seemed even more intolerable than it had at noon. Sweet beaded John's forehead as he rounded the corner and his late mother's home came into sight.

With each step, his anger began to build again. The resentment blinding as he reached the bottom of the short flight of steps to the front door. He had played her games. He had suffered. Anna had suffered. He had given her everything. His inheritance, his savings, his mother's home. John wryly thought how his mother must be rolling over in her grave at the thought of Vera, mistress of her beloved townhome. How she had hated her. If only he had sense enough back then and listened to his mother's misgiving, things might have been different. But if he had learned one thing in life, you can't go back and alter history. You're anchored forever to your mistakes. And God knows, he had made plenty.

John took one last deep breath to ready himself before reaching for the door knocker. Though he wanted to rage with every fiber of his being, he knew that would get him nowhere with Vera. Lord Grantham was right. Remain calm. It would serve no purpose to lose his temper. He should have learned that by now. Even the smallest disagreement had the possibility of flaming into an all-out battle.

She answered the door within seconds, as if she had been waiting for his arrival, ready to pounce.

"Well, well." She surveyed him with her usual disdain, not the least bit surprised. "I am duly impressed. Less than two days. I knew when my solicitor delivered the papers to yours, you might be dropping by. Come in, I believe you know your way around."

With a smirk, she opened the door wider to allow him in. He took another deep breathe and entered.

He hadn't been back since the two insufferable months he had shared the house with Vera after leaving Downton. After leaving Anna. When he returned with her, he had been concerned that she would harp on him to be a proper husband, to commence marital relations. But to his relief, she merely left him alone to his own devices. She seemed perfectly content to spend his money and watch him wallow in his own torment. But after a few days, he knew he had to make things right in his life and with Anna. He met with his solicitor, Mr. James, who suggested the best way to divorce her was to find proof of infidelity. Amazingly, with the help of a private investigator he hired, John had his proof and was out of the house in matter of a few weeks.

But here he was back again. Their affairs still not settled.

"Vera," he began slowly. "We need to discuss the divorce. This charge of bribery holds no water. You freely agreed to the terms. I gave you everything you wanted. Everything. Why keep fighting it?"

"Well the situation has changed. That was before you decided to hole back up with your trollop maid. That was before you thought you could gag me with your high and mighty friends." Vera strolled over to a settee and calmly sat down.

"You thought you could pull one over on me," she continued. "You thought you could end this."

John began pacing, agitated. "Why on earth would you want this farce of a marriage to continue?"

"You've got it wrong, my dear," Her voice dripped with sugary sarcasm at the endearment. " I don't care about continuing to be your wife. I just want your misery to continue. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure you never know a day of sunshine or a ray of happiness. Over my dead body will . . ."

"Is that a challenge?" John puffed.

"Oh, aren't you feisty today. It's starting to feel like old times again," Vera cackled. "As I was saying, over my dead body, will I let you go off and be happy with little Miss Smith, that perfect, clean as snow virgin."

"You leave her out of this." He could feel his temper rising as she continued on.

"Well, I'm assuming virgin. But who knows? I do remember a time when you didn't have much control when it came to women," She goaded him. "Somehow I doubt she knows you like I do. Someday I'd love to swap stories with her. She could tell me all those riveting tales of you as the Earl's valet and I could regale her with all my stories of you as a fall-down drunk who chased anything in a skirt. Cherished times, weren't they, my sweet?"

While his anger rose to protect Anna's good name, the simple mention of her name had a soothing quality. She was the singular reason he was here trying to come to a resolution, any kind of resolution, with Vera. Yet another deep breathe.

"Believe or not. She knows of my past and is willing to have me just the same." John still struggled wrapping his brain around Anna's unconditional love for him, her acceptance of his faults, his mistakes, his ugly history. He didn't deserve her love, but he could never turn it away as much as he knew that truly would be the honorable course of action. He was simply too weak. He had promised her he would never go away again. And that was one promise he intended to keep.

"Well, she really is as dumb as she looks. But she'll be sorry." Vera scoffed. "You see, if you don't pull back, we can continue on with the divorce proceedings where I will tell the court and the public, mind you, how you bribed me to release you if I kept my mouth shut about a certain scandal involving a certain Earl's daughter.

Vera leaned back and smiled as the significance of her words sunk into John's head.

"You guessed it, John. Official court proceedings trump any contract I may have signed with that pompous Carlisle. All it takes is alerting some newspapers, I'm sure Sir Richard doesn't own them all, and once again the public can learn of all those dirty secrets of Downton. "

One step forward, two steps back. He was right back where he started. John gave into his weariness and sunk into an armchair across from Vera. It had been nearly ten hours since he boarded a train from Downton at dawn. Then he had waited for two hours to see Mr. James. His leg burned and his head was splitting. He vaguely recalled he hadn't eaten all day.

He sighed in defeat, "Vera, I know you hate me." He held up a hand when she began to speak and continued on. "I concede you have plenty of reasons to wish me to Hell, but what I don't understand is why you can't just let it go? I've given you all you wanted, everything I can. You don't want a life with me. Why hold on?"

She looked him straight in the eye, "Because you ruined my life."

John rubbed his eyes, looked up to the ceiling briefly. He simply was at a loss. He always did accept that he had been responsible for hardship in Vera's life. That he had been an abysmal failure of a husband. But he just couldn't grasp how he alone was responsible for destroying her life.

"I know I was less than perfect husband." A snort of derision came from Vera. "All right, I admit I was a down-right failure. I drank too much. I wasn't faithful. I didn't provide for you as a husband should." He paused before going on. "And there was the baby. . .But that was over ten years ago. I've tried to make amends. You are financially stable for the future. Did I really ruin your life?"

She ignored his question and zeroed in on what he said prior. "Well John, I am surprised you remembered the baby. Now what baby do you think that would be that ruined my life?"

"What do you mean?" John clearly confessed. "The baby you lost while I was in prison, of course. The child I was willing to sacrifice my freedom for."

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," she chided him. "So, you really want to know how you wrecked my life? Stole my youth? And why I will never let you be happy? Do you, now?

John just waited.

In absence of a response, Vera slammed her hand down on the side table sloshing tea over the side of her cup. "Well answer me. Do you? " Another second ticked by. "Answer me!"

John knew the direction that such a "conversation" with Vera could go when she started banging things about. He breathed deeply and exhaled. "Yes, Vera. I want to know."

"To begin with, you dragged me off to be a soldier's wife to live in that rat invested hovel of a flat outside the army base"

What an interesting interpretation of history. Enlisting had been Vera's idea. They both longed for a life of adventure, a life other than what was available in their small village. That is what had drawn them together. A need to escape. Their marriage was a means to an end. Vera ruthlessly pushed for him to join. It would bring them to England where opportunities were abundant. Yet when they got there, the only housing they could afford near the base was a small step above squalor. It only took a few months before the cracks to began to show in their marriage.

"It was your idea for me to enlist." John protested.

"But not to have you gone for months and years at a time. You don't know how long a day can be when you know no one, have no money and have no place to be."

"I'm sure it was hard, but that's life of a soldier's wife"

"And I suppose almost bleeding to death on a dirty floor is also included in that life."

John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Where was this headed? "What are talking about?"

"About a month into your first long maneuvers I found out I was expecting."

"A baby?" John was flabbergasted. He had never known.

"Yes, a baby, you idiot. That's usually what expecting means." Vera barked.

"Why didn't you write me? Why didn't you tell me. I don't understand." John's words tried to catch up with his thoughts. Why had she kept this secret? How could he not have known?

"Because I damn well didn't know whether or not I wanted to keep the baby. My life was miserable as it was and I wasn't sure I wanted a child to deal with. Your child to be more precise. All the racket, all the headache."

John was not exactly surprised by Vera's sentiments. He had heard them before. He still didn't understand how the maternal instinct was not present in all women. He briefly thought of Anna. If ever there was a woman born to mother, it was her. She deserved a family and he wanted so badly to give her one. That was precisely the reason he sat now with Vera.

Vera took a sip of tea and continued on. "As life would have it, I miscarried. For two days, I lay in agony on the floor in a puddle of my own blood. If it wasn't for the milk delivery boy who saw me through the partially cracked open door, I am sure I'd be dead."

"I'm sorry, Vera."

"Oh sure you are." Vera countered jumping off the settee to come over to where John was sitting. "I could have died because you weren't there. Then you came home and never once asked me how I was, never once asked about me what I wanted. All you could do was gloat about how you were chosen to be the batman to an Earl. You were so damn self-absorbed."

John remembered that leave very well. He had been so proud of his appointment to serve Lord Grantham. Yet he could still recall her reaction to his promotion. Does it come with more money? She didn't care in the slightest that he had been chosen out of a hundred men. Even after all these years, her lack of recognition still bristled. He had worked incredibly hard and had been rewarded accordingly. But all she cared about were the spoils. All she ever did was complain about money, the apartment, the lack of social life. It was then he started to spend evenings away from home. At the pub with mates, flirting with the barmaids. But never once did Vera tell him about the miscarriage.

As Vera hovered over him, John looked up. "Is that all? Is there more?"

"So almost dying isn't reason enough to hate you?" She spat out.

"As horrible as that must have been, I don't see how you can blame me. I knew nothing of the miscarriage. I would helped you in some way if I'd had known."

Vera huffed and turned away toward the front picture window. Gesturing grandly and talking loudly as if to an imaginary crowd, "So he wants more than a miscarriage to account for my loathing. Well, how about being raped by his fellow comrades?"

"What?" That was all John could manage. He shifted in his chair to see her, trying to grapple with what she was saying.

"My, my, I think I've actually shocked you. I wasn't sure that was possible." Vera turned to look out the window. "After you left for Africa, I started going out more to the local pubs. I figured if you could have some fun, why couldn't I?"

John didn't like the direction this was headed. For the most part, his time in the military had brought him in contact with men he had the utmost respect for. But he did know that not all soldiers conducted themselves with the same dignity and honor. For some, it was simply a job and paycheck. They couldn't care less of serving King and Country.

"One night, " Vera paused blindly staring out the window, "after an evening out, a soldier, I never knew his name, offered to see me home. I accepted since I didn't have a husband around to do the job. We left out a back door. He then led me through an alley. There, two of his friends appeared. And what more is there to tell. They attacked me.

John closed his eyes. For as much as he hated Vera for all the trouble she had caused him and Anna, and he truly did hate her, his heart also hurt for her. No one deserved to go through such an ordeal. He was her husband and he hadn't been able to stop it. John added another failure to his already long list.

"Vera, I don't know what to say."

"I don't really care what you have to say. But do you want to know what they said when they assaulted me, time after time?" Vera paused for effect before going on "'This here Bates' wife?. . . 'Bout time we bring him down a notch or two. . . He thinks he's so much better than us, being a Batman and all.'"

Vera turned around. "Are you beginning to understand why I hate you?"

John remained quiet. No exactly sure what to say. Not sure if she was finished or not.

"And then you, " Vera waved a finger in his direction, "came home. God, what a mess you were. Crippled, stupid and drunk. A useless man."

He winced remembering his first months back in country. He did feel like a waste of a man. He had no purpose in life except to get pissed every night. He barely remained sober while he on duty each day. His life was spiraling out of control. And God, how he fought with Vera. She called him names. She nagged about money. She groused about their flat. She took swipes at his manhood. It was only after goading him to prove he was a man that they would have intimate relations.

Amazingly, during one of these hate-filled lovemaking sessions, a child was conceived.

"No way was I going to have a child with you, but your damnable honor got in the way. It would have been so much easier if you had just come up with the money to get rid of the baby."

To this day, the thought of aborting their baby, his baby, sickened John. Though he was living a bleak, sorry existance, the thought of a child speared a possessive, paternal instinct in him. It was his child and he would not see it hurt. It was the one time during their marriage he absolutely put down his foot. There was no way he would pay for it. No way he would allow it. But Vera, of course, had other ideas.

"And because of you wouldn't pay for it, I had to steal the silver. Because of you, I had to face hardships you could never imagine." Vera accused.

"Hardships?" John asked incredulously struggling to get to his feet. "What hardships did you have? I went to prison for two years. Two whole years. Just so you wouldn't have to. So our baby wouldn't be born in prison. I was dishonorably discharged. I lost my war pension."

John look down and took a deep breathe and began again. "I know you miscarried the baby because of the strain you had from finding employment and making end's meat. But I was imprisoned for a crime I didn't commit." Ironically, it was the guilt John felt over the miscarriage that spurred him to turn his life around.

"You want to know hardship. I didn't have a miscarriage. I only wrote you that so I wouldn't have to see your sorry face ever again. I knew your honor would keep you from seeking me out if you thought you caused me to lose the baby. No, I didn't lose the baby. You see, you didn't leave me with enough money to get rid of the baby and by the time I had earned enough from scrubbing stinking sinks and tubs, I was too far along for any doctor, even a hack, to abort it."

John took three quick steps to stand in front of Vera. "What are you saying? What do you mean?"

"I had the baby. A girl. God, do you know how difficult labor. . ." Before Vera could finish, John pushed her hard against the wall. His cane fell to the ground with a slam that reverberated in the silent room. His large hands held her shoulders in place. He knew he was probably bruising her, but he didn't care.

"You had the baby? We have a daughter? " He choked out. When Vera said nothing but winced at his hold, he pushed her against the wall again. "Damn it, answer me!"

"Yes, a daughter."

For a brief moment, a feeling of elation went through John. He had a daughter somewhere in the world. A living being who was of his making. An unconditional love filled his heart.

"I don't know what you're so upset about. It's not like you were in any shape to be a parent then." complained Vera struggling against his hold.

Defeated, John released Vera, turned and hobbled away a few steps and picked up his cane. She was right. He hadn't been in a position to be a father, provide for a child, financially or emotionally.

"What happened to her?" He dreaded the answer, but he had to know.

"Not sure. The mid-wife said she would be placed in an orphanage in the south of London. I am assuming that's what occurred." Vera answered as if talking about a package to be posted.

John turned to face her. He had to know, "But why didn't you keep her?"

"Simply, she was your child. I could not stand to be saddled with something that came from you. I could not look at her everyday and be reminded of you." Vera paused. "And now do you see how you ruined my life? And that is why I will never let you be happy."

Vera smiled, "So Johnny, you must choose now. Go to court and I will smear that good name of Miss Smith's so much she will never be thought of as respectable again." Vera laughed when John's head snapped up as a look of rage filled his eyes. "And somehow I am not sure the Earl will not want you working there once the reputation of Downton is dragged through the ringer."

"Or you can choose to stop the divorce proceeding. Let me keep what you've already promised me." She turned looking around the front room. "Ah, such a lovely home. And I'll be magnanimous. You can go back to Downton. Back to pretty little Anna. But know this. . " Vera paused and walked directly in front of John, only inches away, and leaned up to whisper in his ear. "You will never, and I mean never, have a life with her. At least not a full one. You will never get to marry her. You will never get to have a home with her. You will never get to have children with her. Never!"

John felt the fury rise throughout his whole body. Vera had just listed all that he wanted in life. All that he had promised to give to Anna. He leaned heavily on his cane with one hand to balance himself, while he raised his other.

"Oh, go ahead. I dare you. I know you always wanted to hit me. I know who you really are."

As his hand wavered in the air, John mind slipped back to Anna's words before he left. _We are going to be together whether she likes it or not. _He couldn't let her down. Not now. Not his Anna. Not Anna who really knew who he was.

He slowly lowered his hand. "No, Vera. You don't know me. You may have known me ten years ago. But I'm not man anymore."

John turned and began in a slow gait towards the front door.

"Where are you going?" cried Vera.

"Home" John answered not bothering to turn around. Home to Anna. Despite the terrible tales he had just learned and the obstacles to happiness he still faced, John smiled.

He was about ten feet from the door when heard the first scream followed by a crash. He looked down to see one of his mother's fairy tale figurines, Sleeping Beauty, shattered on the floor after hitting the wall behind him. Before he had time to react, Vera came roaring at him with a figurine in each hand. He ducked as Cinderella whirled past his head. He was almost to the door when he heard Vera wail, "you'll be sorry John Bates" and launched the last figurine. Rapunzel hit him square on his right temple. With that, John escaped out and hurried down the steps as fast as could with his leg and cane.

As John walked in a daze toward the train station, he mopped blood off his forehead from Vera's direct hit. He oddly felt a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He knew all of Vera's secrets now, all her motivation. Not that it made his and Anna's situation easier, but all the cards were on the table. And Anna was right. They were going to be together whether Vera liked it or not. Leaving Anna was the biggest mistake of his life. He was not going to lose her again. Not because of Vera, not because of Downton, not because of anything.

His only thought as he boarded his train was to get home and see Anna. He had to tell her everything. He was done with secrets. Done with hiding things under the guise of having her best interests at heart. No, she needed to hear it all. . . even that he had a daughter. A daughter he already loved in his heart. Anna would understand. Of course, she would. She was the most caring and loving person he had ever met. But a small voice in his subconscious, spoke his fear. . .what if she didn't understand? What if she rejected the idea of his daughter, after all, it was Vera's daughter too? What if she turned away from him over this?

As the newly posted telephone poles zoomed past his window, John realized just how bone tired he was. His eyes closed against his will and he fell asleep. He would be home soon.


End file.
